![]() ![]() ![]() With spellbinding lyricism, award-winning author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam tell a moving and deeply profound story about how one boy is able to maintain his humanity and fight for the truth, in a system designed to strip him of both. ![]() Despair and rage almost sink him until he turns to the refuge of his words, his art. Suddenly, at just sixteen years old, Amal’s bright future is upended: he is convicted of a crime he didn’t commit and sent to prison. “Boys just being boys” turns out to be true only when those boys are white. He's found guilty, in part because the White teen whose testimony could exonerate him lies in a coma. Amal’s first-person narration is an extraordinary achievement of. Honestly, we can’t think of a more relevant book to read with young people or a more poignant example of the power of poetry and art to help us make sense of. A fast-paced novel in verse co-authored by National Book Award finalist Ibi Zoboi ( American Street) and activist Yusef Salaam of the Exonerated Five, Punching the Air is an intimate and moving portrait of the realities and consequences of the school-to-prison pipeline. Then one fateful night, an altercation in a gentrifying neighborhood escalates into tragedy. When PUNCHING THE AIR begins, Amal, a Black Muslim teen enrolled in an arts high school, is on trial for his role in a fight between a group of Black teens and a group of White teens. At the same time, Punching the Air feels like a scrapbook of its hero’s life, constructed of vivid childhood memories, bursts of creative inspiration, and letters from a girl he likes. But even in a diverse art school, he’s seen as disruptive and unmotivated by a biased system. Amal Shahid has always been an artist and a poet. ![]()
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